Translation Copyright 1998 by Peter Lemesurier
And since, Sire, in this address I am presenting these predictions almost confusedly - both in respect of when each may occur and in the respect of the amount of time which shall elapse until the events themselves - in a way that conforms little, if at all, with the above: [and since], whether by means astronomical or by other means (namely the Holy Scriptures, which can in no wise fail), if I wished to set a definite term [i.e. date] to each quatrain, this could be done: yet this would not be pleasing to all, still less [that I should] interpret them, [at least] until, Sire, your Majesty should have granted me full power to do so, lest any occasion be given to the slanderers to savage me.
However, counting the years from the creation of the world until the birth of Noah, there passed 1506 years; and from the birth of Noah to the completion of the construction of the Ark in the run-up to the world-flood there passed 600 years (whether the data were solar or lunar or a mixture of the two - though I maintain that the Holy Scriptures hold them to be solar). And at the end of these six (hundred) years, Noah entered the Ark in order to be saved from the flood: and this flood was world-wide, and lasted a year and two months. And from the end of the flood to the birth of Abraham there passed a total of 295 years. And from the birth of Abraham until the birth of Isaac there passed 100 years.
And from Isaac to Jacob, sixty years, [and] from the time when he entered Egypt until he left it again there elapsed 130 years. And from the time when the latter entered Egypt until the exodus therefrom there elapsed 430 years. And from the exodus from Egypt to the building of the Temple, which Solomon constructed in the fourth year of his reign, there passed four hundred and eighty (or fourscore) years. And from the building of the Temple to Jesus Christ, according to the calculation of the sacred scribes, there passed 490 years. And so it is that, according to this calculations that I have carried out in conjunction with the sacred scriptures, this amounts [in all] to some 4173 years and four months, more or less. [Which would make the theoretical terminal date of the then-conventional 7000 years of earth history 2828 AD!]
Now as regards [the time] from Jesus Christ to now, given the diversity of sects, I shall say nothing. And [I have] reckoned and calculated the present prophecies entirely according to the chain that encompasses its own recurrence, entirely according to Astronomical teaching and to my [own] natural instinct. After some time, and taking in the time when Saturn shall go retrograde to enter [its sign] on the 7th of the month of April until 25th August; Jupiter from 14th June to 7th October; Mars from 17th April until 22nd June; Venus from 9th April to 22nd May; Mercury from 3rd February to 24th of the same - and afterwards from 1st June until the 24th of the same, and from 25th September until 16th October - Saturn [being] in Capricorn; Jupiter in Aquarius; Mars in Scorpio; Venus in Pisces; Mercury in Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces [all] within one month; the Moon in Aquarius; the head of the Dragon in Libra; its tail in the neighbouring sign following a conjunction of Jupiter with Mercury, with a quartile aspect between Mars and Mercury; and the head of the Dragon alongside a conjunction of the sun with Jupiter... [most of this rigmarole seems designed purely to impress and obfuscate, but some of the above seems to apply to the year 1783, if I remember right...!!]
...the year shall be peaceful without any eclipse whatever, and it shall be the start, among other things, of a dispensation that shall endure. And as from that year there shall be inflicted on the Christian Church a greater persecution that was ever carried out in North Africa, and this shall last until the year 1792, which shall be considered as the beginning of a new age. After this the Roman people shall begin to stand up [for themselves] again and to banish certain dark shadows while recovering something of their original light, [though] not without great divisions and continual upheavals.
Thereafter shall Venice with great force and power raise its wings to such a lofty height as barely to fall short of the power of ancient Rome. And at that time great ships from Istanbul, joined with the Italians thanks to the support of powers to the north [Russia and/or Ukraine?], shall in some way prevent both [types of] Cretans from holding to their promises. Vessels built by the former military shall sail in company through Neptune's waves. In the Adriatic there shall be vast discord, what was united shall be split asunder, and present and former cities (including the all-powerful European Babylon) shall be reduced to a single house on the forty-fifth, forty-first, forty-second and thirty-seventh degrees of latitude [presumably - despite the apparently confused order - Turin, Naples, Rome (here identified as 'Babylon', as in John's Revelation) and Syracuse in Sicily].
And at that time and in those countries the power of hell shall confront the Church of Jesus Christ with all the might of those who oppose its teachings, who shall be the second Antichrist, and who shall persecute the said Church and its true Vicar via the authority of the temporal rulers who in their ignorance shall be seduced by tongues that shall cut more deeply than any maniac's sword.
The said reign of the Antichrist shall last only until the death of him who was born of age and of the other in the city of Plancus [Lyon, founded by Lucius Munatius Plancus in 43 BC ], accompanied by the elected [ruler] of Modena Fulcy [unidentified place-name], near a Ferrara that is supported by Adriatic Italians [Venetians?], as well as by a not-far-distant Sicily. Then the Gallic Ogmion [The Gallic version of the classical Hercules, noted for his eloquence] shall pass the Mountain of Jove [either the Montjuich in Barcelona, or the Capitoline Hill in Rome], accompanied by such a vast host that the Empire shall be presented from afar with a greater dispensation, and then for some time the blood of innocents shall be shed profusely by villains of middle rank. Then in the course of great floods the memory of what is preserved in the documents shall suffer countless losses, as shall even the knowledge of writing itself, especially in the northern hemisphere. And by the will of God Satan shall be bound once more.
And world-peace shall be established among humans, and the Church of Jesus Christ shall be delivered from all its tribulations, despite all the efforts of debauched hedonists to adulterate the honey with the gall of their pestilent seduction. This shall be near [the end of] the the seventh millennium [by contemporary calculations, either 1800 or 1887, but more like 2828 if Nostradamus's figures advanced above are used], when the sanctuary of Jesus Christ shall no longer be trampled underfoot by infidels from the north, and when the world shall be approaching some great conflagration (though my prophetic calculations reveal that time itself will go on for a good while longer).